“The Book Party”
A letter from Mary Lawton (“Mrs. Walton”) to Annie Fellows Johnston.
Dear “Cousin Annie”
The “Book Party” at the Query Club, was a grand success, and very interesting.
My silence regarding it is truthfully due to the fact that I have had no cook, no laundress & upstairs girl, no water, no filler yet. No man to attend to it as his wife and the only one he has is very ill & I can’t “fuss” with him. An attack of rheumatism, with “nerves” & vile headaches thrown in besides a few other trifles, much I am sure you will consider sufficient without giving the balance of the ninety-nine.
I represented the Christmas Vacation, Evelyn Barnett, “Madame Butterfly” in rich costume, so becoming, she really looked beautiful. Several presented theirs in music, some in dress, others in brief talks. 
Altogether it was unique. And Fanny is giving a book luncheon on Friday to Mrs. Creighton.
I thought you could use it. I would make a list of the books represented & how. I have asked a number of girls, without, of course, giving reasons, what would make them maddest. What rile them to a cross-eyed degree, and most hurt their “feelins” to the core! Answers condensed are all the same-the little tattle-tales of the idle & mischievous ~~ of society, who repeat from one to another, get things mixed, do injustice, put people on official terms & certainly “things & feelins” get as “higglety-pigglety” & tragically topsy turvy as one could wish.
Mary Forrester has been on the ragged edge of just that by her propensity to be funny and play tricks over the telephone.
For instance last summer she asked one of the girls to go to a party with her, representing herself as a boy whom they all knew and who already had an engagement for that party. Mary found out in time to correct the error & squirm out, but she has had some very narrow escapes.
I do hope you can get some wee bit from these scrambly letters. The truth is–my thinker won’t work. I am almost imbecilic.
Love to each one
Always Devotedly
March 7 – Mary C. Lawton
(1905-6??)
